Gaming & Culture —

17 things we learned from Sony’s massive PS4 FAQ

No audio CD or MP3 support, but you can be logged in on two systems at once.

By our count, the massive Ultimate FAQ that Sony posted today regarding the PS4 answers 191 questions about the system, ranging from the essential (“When does PS4 come out in different countries and regions?”) to the trivial (“Does PS4’s graphical user interface have a name like the PS3 system’s ‘Cross Media Bar’?”).

You can read through the whole thing yourself, but you’ll end up wasting a lot of time on things that are obvious, already well-known, or simply inessential marketing speak. To help save you the trouble, here is our list of 17 good, bad, and ugly things we learned from the FAQ. While not all of these items are strictly new information, they are all important or interesting, and they're presented here to counteract the slow drip of information Sony has been putting out for months now.

The good

You can be logged in to two PS4 systems at once

As long as one of the systems is the “primary” system for a given PSN account, you can simultaneously log in on another PS4 without kicking out the first user. This will give you access to all the same games, cloud saves, and any other information from the second system—no fuss, no muss. This is potentially a killer feature for multi-system homes.

The PS4 supports system-level voice commands

With the PlayStation Camera or the included mono headset, you can “control key PS4 functions using [voice] commands such as starting up a game or taking a screenshot.” I’m sure Sony has mentioned this in the past, but the company has generally buried any talk of this feature. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been trumpeting the Xbox One Kinect’s support for voice commands from the highest rooftops for months now.

The PS4 is designed to stand upright or be laid flat

This is in contrast to the Xbox One, which Microsoft says you should only stack vertically “at your own risk.” Sony is even selling an official stand for $14 to make sure your vertical system stays stable.

You don’t need to reset the PS4’s video settings when moving a system to a new TV

Anyone who ever took their PS3 to a friend’s house, only to end up struggling to even get a picture to show up on a TV with different display settings or resolution, faced this annoyance. Apparently, Sony has fixed the problem this time around.

The PS4 uses an internal power supply rather than a bulky external power brick

The bad

The PS4 doesn’t support external hard drives

We had some idea this one was coming—Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida tweeted about it a few months ago, but the official confirmation is a big deal. One possible reason: all PS4 games have to be cached to the hard drive “to ensure a smooth gaming experience,” according to Sony. Trying to stream that cached game data over a USB connection might be too slow to provide the desired smoothness.

It should be noted that the Xbox One also won’t have this feature at launch, but Microsoft says that it is working on adding it in a future update. Sony’s answer doesn’t suggest any similar future update is coming. On the plus side, Sony reconfirmed that the included 500GB hard drive inside the PS4 is fully replaceable with another standard hard drive, just as it was on the PS3. The Xbox One, on the other hand, doesn’t allow for the internal hard drive to be replaced.

The PS4 can’t play MP3s or audio CDs, and it doesn’t have an audio visualizer

Some of the most surprising revelations in the FAQ have to do with the removal of a lot of audio media support functions that were in the PlayStation 3 (and have been in the PlayStation line since the original system, in the case of audio CD and visualizer support). This might seem like a baffling thing to remove until you scroll down a bit in the FAQ and read about Sony’s own Music Unlimited service, which is now the only way for PS4 owners to “create the soundtrack of their choice to listen to while playing their favorite games”—as long as users pay $10 a month for the privilege. We can’t say for sure that these two facts are linked, but it is rather suspicious.

Another PS3 media feature that’s missing from the PS4 is the lack of DLNA support, which will be disappointing to anyone who planned to use their PS4 as a media hub for their living room. These days, chances are good that you have some other devices hooked up to your TV that do largely the same thing. Still, it’s a disappointing rollback.

The PS4 needs a one-time online activation before it can play DVDs and Blu-ray movies

We’ve actually known about this since last week, when Sony first announced the day-one downloadable update that will activate many of the PS4’s launch features. Still, we find it a little amusing (and baffling) that the PlayStation 2 could play DVDs right out of the box back in 2000, but its successor’s successor can’t do the same 13 years later. This is progress?

The official Blu-ray remote for the PlayStation 3 won’t work on the PlayStation 4

We can understand why Sony would want to cut off support for the old DualShock 3 controller, which is missing a few key features that are built in to the DualShock 4. Removing the functionality of the old remote, though, is more mystifying.

You can’t add a voiceover to a shared gameplay clip on the PS4

While you can talk over a livestream of your gameplay, you can’t add audio to a recorded gameplay video clip before you share it to Facebook or PSN. Voiceovers can be added after the fact on the Xbox One using the system’s Upload Studio software.

Players can’t export PS4 gameplay clips directly to a PC

While this feature is being promised for a future update, it will be missing at launch. Combined with the lack of an external HDMI-capture solution until another future update means it’s going to be hard to get video off of the PS4 in a form that’s of much use to YouTubers and others who need it at launch.

The ugly

PS4 games no longer come on DVD?

That’s the implication from an answer indicating that “physical PS4 games come on Blu-ray Disc, the best form of media capable of handling the large amounts of data that PS4 requires.” We suppose there’s no reason to continue to support plain-old DVD-based games any longer, but it’s still the end of an era if the format is on its way out for game storage.

The PS4 allows for firmware update from a “safe mode”

Like the PS3 before it, you’ll be able to boot the PS4 to a “safe mode” by holding down the power button for seven seconds. This will allow users to install firmware updates from a USB memory stick, but Sony warns that “Users should only update using official files downloaded from PlayStation.com." How long do you think it will be before hackers try to use this safe mode installation to their own advantage?

The PS4 only supports four controllers being connected at one time

This is technically a downgrade from the PS3, which allowed for seven DualShock controllers to be synced at once. That said, I can’t think of any PS3 games that allow for seven-player local multiplayer, so this isn’t that much of a downgrade.

Vita Remote Play “may or may not work” outside of the home.

Sony warns heavily that playing PS4 games on a Vita while on the go requires “a robust and stable Wi-Fi connection and broadband Internet connection,” and Sony “strongly recommends” that you use the feature only when the Vita and PS4 are on the same local network. This is pretty different from Sony’s marketing messages, which show happy, bright-eyed young people easily accessing Remote Play without a care as they go about their days.

There’s no system level support for USB or Bluetooth mice

This isn’t that surprising, but it was still interesting to see it directly addressed. USB and Bluetooth keyboards will work, though, and “certain games” may support mouse control, Sony says.

So, the way I'm reading your bullet point list is "I couldn't really find anything serious to put on the "ugly" list. Is that correct?

I mean, if the *worst* we can say about the PS4 is that it doesn't play DVD games, then I think Sony did a pretty good job.

Quite honestly I'd have put the DLNA client removal in the 'Ugly' category.

I said this higher up, but ugly is not supposed to be worse than bad. It's supposed to be for the weird, hard to categorize stuff.

494 posts | registered Jan 17, 2012

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl